Posts Tagged With: ignorance

When a person wants to give the world the message that God is for people not against them, they often go to John 3:16-17 to make the point. That is why this passage is so popular.

This, you see, is how much God loved the world: enough to give his only, special son, so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God’s new age. After all, God didn’t send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world could be saved by him. (3:16-17)

Nevertheless, twice this passage is also very clear that what one chooses to do with Jesus is a life or death decision.

Anyone who believes in him is not condemned. But anyone who doesn’t believe is condemned already, because they didn’t believe in the name of God’s only, special son. (3:18)

Anyone who believes in the son shares in the life of God’s new age. Anyone who doesn’t believe in the son won’t see life, but God’s wrath rests on him. (3:36)

I was struck, though, by the emphasis that was placed on the fact that condemnation comes to those who actively reject Jesus.

And this is the condemnation: that light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because what they were doing was evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light; people like that don’t come to the light, in case their deeds get shown up and reproved. (3:19-20)

Jesus is presented to these people in a clear fashion, they are presented with a choice to follow him or not, and they choose not to, often because an undesirable lifestyle will be necessary. However, rejection is simply not the same as ignorance. We are not talking about people who do not know who Jesus truly is. That is a different matter entirely.

Ever heard those charges? More and more, these insults are thrown around as simple truths.

Christians sometimes don’t accept the theories and beliefs that others hold as settled fact. Some Christians even talk about science like it is an enemy of faith (which might just be a bit ignorant, frankly). Christians can be viewed by some as weak when we don’t fight back or refuse to pursue our own glory and advancement. And to those who don’t accept it, our belief in an afterlife seems like nothing more than wishful thinking and a way to escape our frustrations and disappointments.

The reality of the situation, according to Paul as he starts 1 Corinthians, is that God did intend for it to be this way. God has always chosen the unconventional way of working. Only criminals die on crosses; the gospel was scandalous to Jews. And humans can’t kill gods; the gospel sounded foolish to Greeks. Yet this is exactly the message with which God sent his ambassadors into the world. Why?

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the shrewdness of the clever I’ll abolish. (1:19)

God’s folly is wiser than humans, you see, and God’s weakness is stronger than humans. (1:25)

God gladly plays the underdog. He’ll take the B-string. He’ll do things that sound backwards and foolish, but . . . when they bring about change, when those things make all the difference, when they render other things ineffectual, it will be God and His wisdom that stands supreme.

So, yes, for a time we may very well seem ignorant, weak, and even like escapists. God’s wisdom is still being revealed in its glory.